


What We May Be

by loopyhoopyfrood, PhryneFicathon



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Alternate Timelines, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-14 01:18:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13582950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loopyhoopyfrood/pseuds/loopyhoopyfrood, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhryneFicathon/pseuds/PhryneFicathon
Summary: A brief glimpse into Jack and Phryne’s lives had their biggest influence never existed.





	1. Without Rosie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MissingMissFisher (bokchoynomad)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bokchoynomad/gifts).



> _Prompt: Something like the story of "It's a Wonderful Life" or "Sliding Doors" where a character has a dream or the reader has a glimpse of the world where either they or another key character never existed (or they never crossed paths)._
> 
> I thought about doing 'Jack and Phryne if they never met', but realised there wasn't much story in that (at least to me anyway). Instead, I thought about which character had the biggest influence in each of their lives, and how their lives would have progressed had that character never existed. The two chapters are intended to be read separately, so in Jack's chapter Phryne's life continued as in the show, and vice versa. I had a lot of fun with this, and I hope you enjoy it!

Jack’s merely a constable when he finds himself being shipped off to war. He’d been one of the first to sign up, with no family to beg him to stay and no commitments urgent enough to convince him to remain. He’d signed up out of a sense of duty, an unwillingness to ignore the fact that others were sacrificing so much more than all that tempted him if he stayed, but as he looks around the crowded boat he knows he’s in the minority. He’s not sure what makes him so sceptical, but he can’t find it in himself to laugh along with those signing up for the thrill and the excitement, those convinced that in a matter of mere months they’ll be sailing back home, triumphant. Jack remains silent, and worries that it won’t be the short trip they’ve all been led to believe.

He’s right, and it’s nearing five years before he finds himself once again crossing the Pacific Ocean, this time returning home. Spirits are high, conversations flooded with memories of parents, of wives and children, of families that await them upon their return. Jack stands at the railing, as alone as one can be in such a crowd, staring not at the hope of land on the horizon but at the sea that stretches out behind them. His parents were gone long before the war had even started, and the blessing of wife or children has evaded him. His family had been those who fought by his side, those who fell by his side; a family that he lost over and over again until each one was nothing but a name and a rank and a memory that was already fading. For a while, Jack had considered staying in Europe, letting the boat back to Australia depart without his weary form on board. There was nothing awaiting him back home, if he could even call it home any more, but he’d eventually decided that nothing was better that the ghosts and memories that would be his only familiar company had he remained.

He settles back into his role as Constable Robinson with an ease he hadn’t expected, but the little ambition he once possessed has vanished. He now knows what it’s like to take command, and the memories of leading men fruitlessly into a barrage of gunfire and mortar shells has curbed any enthusiasm he might have once had for promotion. Eventually his superiors give up asking, and eventually Jack learns how to keep himself out of the limelight, dropping subtle hints and pointers that allow his D.I. to solve the case without realising that Jack had always been two steps ahead. It’s not a perfect life, and sometimes in his impatience Jack wonders if taking that one step up would be all that bad, but then he remembers the bodies and he decides that he’s content enough.

When John Andrews is murdered, Jack is stationed at the bottom of the stairs. He’s already got his suspicions, but he’ll let the D.I take a look before he starts dropping hints. When the woman appears, her delicate pink dress screaming her wealth and status, Jack firmly turns her away, standing his ground as she attempts to wheedle her way up the stairs. Perhaps Jack is harsher than usual, the woman’s flirtatious curiosity at the prospect of death jarring with the images of broken boys that torment Jack’s mind every time he’s called to a murder scene. The woman is stubborn, but so is Jack, and their standoff is only broken by the descent of his D.I., who eventually succeeds in sending her away.

She comes by the station daily after that, and Jack learns her name without really intending to. She always arrives laden with gifts; fresh bread and cold meats, sometimes pie, usually home-baked biscuits, and Jack always means to decline. He never does though, somehow, and he eats his way through the spread from his desk as he tries not to listen to the conversations taking place just beyond the door to his superior’s office. She never does seem to close it properly. Those conversations never last long, his D.I. having little patience for the fairer sex, but it’s enough to make Jack think that maybe he had misjudged her, that day at the bottom of the stairs. She’s still curious, still flirtatious, still completely unashamed at her intrusion, but Jack can’t shake the feeling that her interest in the crime is more than just a way for her to pass the time. She seems to genuinely care, genuinely want to help and when, with more than a few subtle nudges in the right direction from his constable, the D.I. arrests Lydia Andrews for the murder of her husband, the Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher seems genuinely upset.

She turns up at the station often enough after the Andrews’ case that Jack is under strict instructions to turn her away immediately, and to never, under any circumstances, allow her into the D.I.’s office. Jack quickly learns that getting her to leave on anyone’s terms but her own is an impossibility, but he’s as stubborn as she is and he manages to keep her out of his D.I.’s office despite her numerous attempts to bypass his instructions. She turns her charms on him with full force, and there’s the rare moment of weakness when Jack finds himself wondering how she would respond if he took her up on her thinly disguised offer. He’s never been a casual man, however, and sometimes he thinks that’s the one part of himself the war managed to leave untouched.

She’s more persistent than Jack would have expected, but eventually, slowly, her visits to the station become more and more infrequent, until one day Jack comes across a mention of her in his local paper and realises he hasn’t seen her in months. He doesn’t miss her exactly, although his stomach bemoans the loss of her picnic basket, but he’ll grudgingly admit he had enjoyed their verbal sparring. It isn’t long, however, before she fades from his memory like so many before her, and, years later, when Jack is married to a restaurant owner and spies her name in a file he hands over to his D.I., there’s nothing remaining but a slight haze of familiarity and a blurry memory of bright red lipstick.


	2. Without Janey

Phryne’s twelve when she sneaks out of the back door, feet carefully avoiding those floorboards that she knows will give her away, and runs through the darkening streets to find the circus. She knows that her parents won’t notice her absence; her mother laid up in bed with one of those headaches that she seems to suffer from more often than not these days, her father too busy with his liquor cabinet to keep track of his wayward daughter. She runs down the streets alone, her usual cohort of playmates either too closely guarded or too scared of being caught to join her escapade. Well-practiced at entertaining herself alone, Phryne doesn’t mind, and she hides herself in the midst of a raucous group of siblings as she slips through the gates, past ticket men too busy to count the mess of children as they pass. Once safely through, Phryne slips away, wandering between the brightly coloured tents as the cacophony of noise echoes joyfully in her ears. She steals a handful of coins as she wanders, lifting a few at a time from the pockets of those too rich or too unobservant to notice a few missing coins.

She considers each stall carefully before making her decision, but eventually exchanges the stolen coins for a tall cone of pink cotton candy. She savours the treat as she meanders her way towards the main tent, treasuring every last speck of the sugar-laden indulgence as she licks the remains from her fingertips. Feeling daring, she works her way around the edges of the red and white striped tent until she finds a loose flap at the back, and she slips underneath without a second thought.

The show is captivating, and Phryne watches wide-eyed from beneath the benches, taking in the dramatics from behind dangling legs and ladies handbags. She is entranced, but the sugary treat she inhaled quickly begins to take its toll, and despite her rapture Phryne is forced from the tent by the churning of her stomach. Outside the tent the circus is quiet, the crowds having gravitated inside, and consequently there’s nobody to notice, nobody to help, when an arm suddenly wraps around Phryne’s waist, a large hand clamping itself over her mouth before she can think to scream.

She’s spent too much time getting into dirty fights in dirty alleyways to be helpless, and so she drives her elbow back, using her scrawny frame to her advantage as she twists out of the man’s grip. His hand grabs for her again, but she’s already running, weaving her way through the narrow paths between circus tents without thought to where she’s going. Heavy footsteps thunder behind her, but she’s spent her whole life on the streets of Collingwood and she knows how to use the thin gaps and irregular layout to her advantage. Avoiding the main gate, she finds the outer fence, running along it until she finds a pile of boxes that give her the height she needs to leap, landing heavily on the other side. She doesn’t stop running until her hand is clutched around the handle to her own back door, closing it firmly behind her and driving home the lock.

She doesn’t venture out as much after that. Instead she finds her excitement in the pages of her parent’s meagre book collection, exchanging bath-tub pirate ships for the real thing and finding a new home in worlds of fiction. When she’s read everything in the house she takes books from the only slightly larger collection of her school’s run-down library, smuggling them home to devour by candlelight under thin bed sheets. When she runs out of fiction she resorts to information books; out of date encyclopaedias and battered textbooks that teach her far more than the adults who stand at the front of her classrooms.

It’s only once her father’s inheritance comes through that she feels safe enough to venture outside alone again. The estate they inhabit in London, and the girl’s boarding school she soon finds herself a pupil of, are so far from the Collingwood streets she grew up on that she can almost imagine that the man who grabbed her was nothing but the deceptions of a childish imagination. Any paranoia she once had about the stranger following her are gone, swept away by the seas that carried them to England, and Phryne finally rediscovers her freedom. She never loses her love for the written word, however, and she revels in the chance to browse bookstores knowing she can afford to take home the ones that catch her eye.

When the war comes, Phryne refuses to be a passive participant. She ignores her parent’s protests and makes her way to the front lines, finding her place behind the wheel of what was once an old baker’s van, now repurposed to carry the injured and dying away from the gunfire and mortar shells. It’s here that Phryne finally feels she has a purpose, and when news arrives of a ceasefire she finds she can’t face returning home. Like so many others, the war has changed her, and on the days when she’s feeling particularly melodramatic she thinks she’d rather have died in the trenches than return to the restrictions of English aristocracy.

She stays in France, following nothing but her whim and finally learning what true freedom means. She falls in love, but the first time Rene raises a hand to her she’s suddenly a child again, remembering rough hands amongst striped circus tents, and she runs. She doesn’t return to France, but it’s not enough to drive her back to England either. She visits her parent’s home occasionally, mainly for her mother’s sake, but it’s never long before she’s gone again, some new adventure pulling her away. She lives her entire life travelling, never settling, constantly moving from pleasure to pleasure, finding new lovers and new friends wherever she lands. She visits her childhood home rarely, never stopping for long. To her, Australia will never be anything but a small selection of familiar faces and a blurry memory of striped circus tents.


End file.
